⚠️ALERTE! ⚠️
🤯This theory kind of goes in tandem with the “Kris is DR version of Chara'' theory. If you don’t like it, proceed at your own risk🤯.
⚠️ALERTE! ⚠️
Let me be completely clear, I understand that at this point in the story we have very little details to go on about the Vessel, but I simply picked up a few threads of information hovering in the greater DR theorizing ether that made a couple of neuron connection in my brain, and II could not stop thinking about them ever since. I sincerely hope that the theory I have will look at least as half as plausible to you as it does to me right now. This document mostly serves a purpose of summarizing my thoughts into the cold uncaring void so I can hopefully stop thinking about it. Also after so much time ruminating on it, I have genuinely become convinced that something like that will be a part of DRs story, so on the off chance of me being right, I want to throw this out, so I can gloat about me being a genius once new chapters of DR come out (hopefully this will happen before I hit my 30s).
This is more of me explaining my thought process and bigger opinion on DR theorycrafting/predictions process, skip to the next part if you can’t be fucked.
During the creation process of my theory, I tried to rely on existing themes as much as possible while avoiding relying on lore to the best of my abilities. First reason is quite obvious: there is very little lore relevant to the Vessel as it exists. Second is more of my opinion - lore is extremely malleable while themes are set in stone.
What I mean by that is the fact that we have clear themes set up at the outset of the story. For example (and this will be relevant later), exploration of player-protagonist dynamics. Toby has set it up in an extremely clear manner, and they will have to be delivered upon later in the story. Not doing so would be shitty, subversive for the sake of subversion writing, and since you are reading someone's theory in a google doc shared through a Discord server, you are likely a fan of Toby Fox and think rather highly of his writing talent. Therefore known themes are a solid foundation to build your prediction upon, since future events would have to revolve around those themes at least partially.
On the other hand, lore is a putty in the creator's hands. Most of the lore is at the moment in his head, and if it has to be rewritten, reworked, thrown out or handwaved for the sake of a greater story, I have no doubt that Toby won’t hesitate to do so. Undertale did not have entirely consistent lore (look at coffin or essence lore), and a lot of big things (like determination) have been reworked completely for Deltarune, since he decided to give it a new role in the story. I could, for example, absolutely see finer Dark worlds mechanics being never properly explained to us if they do not serve enough purpose to the plot. Not all lines will be relevant, most jokes will simply remain jokes, so bringing little details up has to be justified at least somewhat, lest we tread into a territory of fanfiction.
Clarification: I am not saying that relying on lore is strictly inferior. Simply, in my opinion, themes provide us a more solid ground to stand on when trying to predict future chapters.
Let me set up 3 pieces of in-game information that I will build my theory from. All of those are very obvious, but we still need to establish a baseline from where we can venture forth.
A somewhat redundant part, but I still have to point out that we don’t actually know if Vessel will return as a somewhat relevant character. The Goner Creator sequence seems too important to be a red herring, but still we have to be fair and call it a supposition, even if most people agree on it.
Another obvious point. I brought it up above. I don’t even need to justify or explain it, everybody knows this. This paragraph is here only to signify that this theme is very relevant to the theory.
This part is slightly more contentious, but I believe that not many people will disagree on this point either. The entire Gonermaker sequence is supposed to remind us of a standard video game character creator. It's especially noticeable in contrast with Undertales simple naming sequence, or Kris’s already existing identity. We make the vessel up to our preferences, and so far, this is the only real thing we know about them. If they are going to be a character, the reality of their creation will likely have to be a core part of their identity.
Now, after so much screwing around, let me present an actual “thesis” part of this doc.
‼️ Vessel will be an exploration of self-insert protagonists, specifically, what happens to them when no “self” has been “inserted”. They will be presented as the opposite of Kris in an exploration of the player-protagonist relationship theme.‼️
Ask yourself: what is the usual role of character creators in video games? It is to create a vessel through which we get to experience the game world. They exist solely as a vehicle for self-insertion in the world, and following interaction with the world using this vessel. They are completely defined by the player and exist only as a player's extension. (Often people use character creators to create OCs of course, but regardless, they are still completely defined by the player and are an extension of their imagination, so my point still mostly stands). And that is exactly what Vessel is, ESPECIALLY when we consider that meta exploration of protagonism is already a big part of Deltarune.
When I thought really hard about the Gonermaker sequence, I kept coming back to the thought of “We are literally creating a custom protagonist for ourselves, only then not to control it.” And then after comparing it to Kris, a light bulb lit up in my head: We ended up controlling Kris despite them being their own person, while the blank slate character, whose existence is intrinsically linked to us, ended up not being controlled by us. This is what I mean when I say that they are opposites, as those are radically different takes on the concept of protagonism gone wrong. And I believe that in the future, contrasting them will be a big part of Vessel's point in the story.
Here is an Image that hopefully helps to understand contrasts between Kris and Vessel.
The big reason why I feel that the story will go in this direction is that this will be a meaningful addition to the games story: it expands on the big questions already established from the very beginning, it continues on the pattern of meta-exploration and deconstruction of game mechanics that Toby Fox likes to put in his games. I specifically brought up themes so much to show that, even though there is little evidence for it, this interpretation of Vessel goes rather well with what we already have in DR. In other words, this theory passes Andrew's razor (hopefully, if I am not completely full of shit). Speaking of Andrew, the original idea came to me while watching his rant in one of his videos about how weird it would be to become a puppet protagonist of a game.
It is important to specify, that obviously, this will not be spelled out to us. Vessel is not going to read out a full essay about morality of character creators while staring at camera - this entire thing will be buried within a subtext of the literal story of Vessel (that cannot be predicted right now), but will be obvious for anyone paying attention. You know, like Toby usually writes metanarratives.
After going over that, let’s proceed to the final part of the theory, the one that is probably the most eye-catching part of this document's title.
For those who want to check out at this point, I want to say that I am not going to argue that Vessel is literally Frisk from Undertale in any capacity. Rather, I am going to argue that (if my previous statements are correct) game is going to draw a lot of parallels between Frisk and Vessel, and maybe possibly signify that Vessel is DRs version of Frisk, just like Kris is DR version of Chara (I think I already mentioned that Kris is Chara theory kind of goes in tandem with my theory), or more specifically, Kris is “what Chara would become if they grew up in DRs world” and Frisk is what this type of protagonist would be in circumstances presented in Deltarune.
Now, let me start laying out my train of thought. Once again, this is a thought I had when watching Andrew Cunningham's video, specifically his Kris’s soul video, where he goes on a tangent, describing how Frisk was easily the least developed character of Undertale and contrasting them to Kris. At this point I realized that his Frisk-Kris comparisons are very similar to my Vessel-Kris comparisons, specifically because Frisk also played a role of self-insert in Undertale, though we actually did control Frisk back then, as intended. Of course we did not literally shape Frisk like we shaped Vessel, but we did shape their actions throughout the game. Outside of extremely minor details, whose relevance is dubious, Frisk's purpose was exclusively to project our will into the world of Undertale and they had practically no defining features of their own.
A lot of people are using Deltarune as an excuse to look back at and reflect on Undertale. And one of those people is undoubtedly Toby Fox. For example, one of the most fascinating parts of Kris is Chara theory is the fact that we may get a glimpse into Chara's personality, even if indirectly. And I believe that it is at least partially intended by the big T himself. And if you actually compare our 2 protagonists, we can immediately see a massive rift between the stoic nobody of Frisk and Kris, the depressed teenager with opinions that may conflict with even your opinions. In Undertale, the nature of protagonism was never questioned. This question is obviously being explored in Deltarune (Yes, I am heavily quoting ACs video here), but I am postulating that Toby Fox will not pass up an opportunity to retroactively and indirectly apply this line of questioning to Undertales protagonist.
Once again, I have to state that I do not believe that Vessel will come out and say “Hi! I’m Frisk!”. There will be the underlying meta implications on the nature of his character during events of the story, just like Kris is implied to be Chara by details such as love of chocolate and knives, being Asriels adopted sibling, etc.
A weaker point in favor of this theory is that this turn of events would neatly wrap up the question of “who from UT became who in DR”. Quoting Andrew again (paraphrased): “All the plot relevant characters from UT have been accounted for, except Frisk and Chara, and all we have to fill the role of Chara is … … Kris”. Notably, after that he simply shrugs on the question of Frisk. This theory completes the set, though I want to reiterate: this is a weak point. More of a “this would fit nicely in this hole if I were to be correct” type of thing.
Hopefully I came through in a non-rambly manner. I did have to glue a ton of my separate thoughts into something that looked remotely palatable. As I am reading it, I realize that this is a weird prediction because I am trying to predict characters' thematic significance and role in the metanarrative without having any clue about the literal part in the literal story they will play. Oh well, here is an image that will hopefully help you make sense of the thought process that led me here (or at least not make my point even less convincing) (Holy shit, the image is a mess).
This is the end for my thoughts on the Vessel. As an addition here is some speculation on what will literally happen to the character in the game. At this point I am writing something close to fanfiction.
Vessels' meta conflict of unfulfilled protagonism could be represented in the story in a form of an internal conflict that causes them a massive amount of existential angst. Something along the lines of “What is my Purpose?” “You pass butter” “Oh my god.” It is possible that this may spill over into a real conflict towards other characters. They may be jealous of Kris for them beating them to being the main character, or being resentful towards the Player, or hateful towards whoever interrupted the Gonermaker sequence. Those could also be the possible motive for them being the Knight. I am mostly shooting in the dark here, I am not attached to my predictions here as much as the things I wrote above.
FIN
I guess this is it. If you have any complaints or suggestions, I really implore you to contact me and tell them to me. I am not entirely happy how this doc turned out, plus I probably missed a bunch of typos and awkward phrasing. If you noticed them or have faults with logic presented, I would really like to receive any criticism you have.